[Susan B. Anthony (b. 02-15-1820) was noted for her speeches
in support of abolition and women's suffrage. This speech On Woman's
Right to Suffrage was delivered in 1873. SBA had exercised what she
saw as her right to vote and been arrested since women were specifically
forbidden the vote. She was fined, refused to pay the fine, and the judge
never held her in contempt of court. The matter was ignored by the judicial
system but women (other than in some states for local elections) were forbidden
the vote. Women were finally guaranteed the right to vote in all elections
by an amendment to the U.S. constitution that was ratified 08-26-1920.]

"Friends and
fellow citizens, I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged
crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having
a lawful right to vote.
"It shall be my work this evening to prove
to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead,
simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United
States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State
to deny.
"The preamble of the Federal Constitution
says:

We,
the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.

"It was we, the people; not we, the white
male citizens; yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who
formed the Union.

"And we formed it, not to give the blessings
of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half
of our posterity, but to the whole people women as well as men.

"And it is a downright mockery to talk women
of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the
use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican
government the ballot.

"For any State to make sex a qualification
that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the
people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is
therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land.
By it the blessings of liberty are for ever
withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government
has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed.
To them this government is not a democracy.
It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy
of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the
globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor.
An oligarchy of learning, where the educated
govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules
the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father,
brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the
wife and daughters of every household which ordains all men sovereigns,
all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every
home of the nation.

"Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define
a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold
office.

"The only question left to be settled now
is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have
the hardihood to say they are not.
Being persons, then, women are citizens; and
no State has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall
abridge their privileges or immunities.

"Hence, every discrimination against women
in the constitutions and laws of the several States is to-day null and
void, precisely as in every one against negroes."

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